I Thought Wacha Was The Rainmaker

Last week, Carlos Martinez was scheduled to take the mound Tuesday, but rain came and forced a cancellation, creating a doubleheader the next day. Apparently that was such a good idea the Cardinals thought they’d do it again this week. I guess it could have been worse. I mean, if you are playing the God of Thunder, you don’t want any clouds around.

(On Walden, I kinda think it was something similar to the end of this scene:

Hard to remember when he actually pitched, isn’t it?)

The Williams part of this really was somewhat of a head scratcher. If you’ve read over the last couple of days, you know I kinda thought they’d leave Mayers up until Miguel Socolovich could return. Or perhaps Sam Tuivailala could return in a swap for Mayers. I don’t think anyone expected this move.

It does make some sense, I guess. If there was another short start in the next day or so or if there was an extra-inning affair, someone that could throw multiple innings might be helpful. As someone pointed out on Twitter, though, why not bring him up to make the start on Sunday rather than an untested and questionably ready rookie? If nothing else, you can leave a guy like Williams out there no matter what for 4-5 innings and not worry about ruining the best day of his life. I’m not saying that he’d have given the Cardinals a better chance to win–looking at his career and his Memphis work this year would dissuade you from thinking that–but it wouldn’t have been worse and it would have let you not use up Seth Maness.

And while it probably does make sense to plan for every contingency, Tyler Lyons should be ready to go again as early as today. Matt Bowman could be as well. Many of the short relievers had at least a day of rest. I’m not saying folks aren’t tired–I imagine they are–but I’m not sure how pressing the need for a security blanket was. Someone like Tuivailala or even Ryan Sherriff could come up and give you an extra arm in the pen.

Because, honestly, save for Michael Wacha most every starter is going to give you five or six innings at the least right now. The rotation hasn’t been an issue in that regard. True, you never know when you’ll get an extra inning affair, but they don’t happen all that often. The club so often has this want for long men–Joe Kelly, Lyons, and others over the past few years–but often not the need. Lyons went over two weeks without pitching recently and it wasn’t the first time this season.

This is going to be a lot like Michael McKenry, it seems like. They brought McKenry up, barely used him, and then he didn’t clear waivers when they sent him down. (Eric Fryer was a similar situation, though at least they had him for a good chunk of the year even if they didn’t use him.) Granted, it’s no big loss if he can’t go back down to Memphis, but it’s still the principle of the thing.

Then the rain came and really made the situation look unnecessary, given that it allowed another day of rest. Of course, depending on how today goes, Williams might be needed later in the week, but hopefully not starting on Saturday when the need arises. Let’s hope the Patron Pitcher is the one going there.

Anyway, they’ll try again today with Martinez going against Syndergaard, followed up by Jaime Garcia versus Bartolo Colon. We looked at the charts for the first two yesterday, let’s take a look at the others now. Garcia first:

Garcia’s not faced the Mets much, which hopefully will work to his advantage. He’s been solid if not spectacular as of late, which might be enough, though I’d feel better if he was more on the spectacular side in this one.

Colon is having a pretty good year by any standard, but especially when you factor in that he’s 43. (One of the few left that’s older than me!) The Cubs beat him around last time out, as he gave up six runs in 4.1 innings. That was actually the second time this month he’s allowed that many, as July hasn’t been great for him. Still, he’s plenty capable of shutting down St. Louis.